‘The party of ideas’
Posted inPolitics: National

‘The party of ideas’

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Here's something that baffles me about this moment. The right-wing captured Republican Party has complete control over Congress and the White House, as well as growing numbers of federal judges. Damage abounds. But based on their rhetoric and the desire of their voters…

…Why not enact a new version of the Immigration Act of 1924? This was a backlash against decades of record immigration and set strict quotas on people allowed to come, based on their country of origin (hint: big plus for whites, but also no restrictions on Latin Americans). These were in place until 1965 and, uncomfortably for liberals, coincided with the zenith of the American middle class. Congress, firmly in Republican hands and facing no presidential veto, has the absolute power to do this.

…Abolish the Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Again, the Republicans have the complete power to do this. None of these entities existed in 1960, when America was "great." Devolve the responsibilities to the states.

…Repeal the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. It's a longstanding article of faith among conservatives that these are both unconstitutional and bad for the economy. Poof! Gone. Strict interpretation of Article 10 would allow states to impose environmental laws — or try to, facing right-wing federal judges — but it's not something enumerated in the Constitution for the national government.

Republicans, never more in lock-step with the most extreme agenda of their party, could do this. It could avoid the third rail of Social Security. True, it can't outlaw abortion (and birth control), force prayer into public schools, or reverse the gains of LGBTQ people. But the above would be monumental victories, on the order of the New Deal, Great Society, or Trump's beloved Jackson era. They might last only two years — but maybe not, given GOP control of the Census, gerrymandering, vote suppression, and divisions among the Democrats.The GOP couldn't accomplish these sweeping changes under Reagan (when it branded itself as "the party of ideas") or George W. Bush. Now it could.

Yet it didn't. This is fascinating.

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The Arizona experiment
Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

The Arizona experiment

Much has been made by "left-leaning" commentators, notably Thomas Frank, about the disaster created in Kansas by Gov. Sam Brownback's enactment of conservative policies. And yet check out this chart:

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And this:

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Not to diminish "What's the Matter With Kansas," but Arizona is in worse shape. It arguably offers the better example of what happens when orthodox right-wing policies are enacted in a state without the oil and massive federal investments enjoyed by Texas. That Arizona is a growing, highly urbanized state brings into even starker relief the complete bankruptcy of the Kookocracy's "conservative ideas."

And they own this mess. The interregnum of St. Janet saw a constitutionally weak governor playing defense and never tackling the sacred cows of land use, revenue or water. Arizona's ongoing woes are the work of the regressive right that has taken over the Republican Party.

And yet, polls show at best a dead heat between Democratic gubernatorial candidate Fred DuVal — in every way the superior contender — and Republican Doug Ducey. And no chance for Democrats to gain control of the truly powerful branch of government, the state Legislature.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Carter and Reagan

This is the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth, an event greeted with armies of hagiographers and one heart-felt personal book by his progressive son, Ron Reagan. It's also the 30th anniversary of Reagan's ascendancy to the presidency and the end of Jimmy Carter's one failed term in office. Carter is seen as the most successful and admirable former president, but still a personal riddle, as a new Rolling Stone article explores. As if Reagan was not one: Charismatic to the masses, friendly in person (I met him once, as part of a group of other journalists), but utterly distant and opaque beyond that to everyone except, perhaps, Nancy. Some of this sounds like Barack Obama. Maybe there's a certain sociopathic streak that comes with modern presidents. Either way, we live in Reagan's shadow, whether it's for good or bad. But we also live in Carter's.

A few years before he died, Hamilton Jordon, Carter's White House chief of staff, befriended me. He was nothing like the scheming party boy I had been taught to imagine as a young Republican. Instead, I found a man of uncommon depth, intelligence and grace, tempered by a long fight with cancer. It's not giving up any confidences to say Jordan found his boss could be as frustrating as he appeared to us on the outside. My problem with Carter, aside from the Goldwater it took years to cleanse from my system, was his Baptist preacher sanctimony. And, with the Afghanistan invasion by the Soviets and especially the Iranian embassy hostage debacle, he appeared weak and willing to preside over American decline.

But of course the story is more complicated. Ask who started the deregulation movement, appointed Paul Volcker as Fed chairman with a real mandate to break inflation, pushed the MX Missile and modernization of NATO's nuclear forces, as well as presided over building the world's most lethal ballistic missile submarine class, and you'd likely answer, "Reagan." In fact, it was Carter. Ask which president was more pragmatic, most pushed the Soviet Union on human rights, grew to genuinely hate nuclear weapons and proposed banning all ballistic missiles, and whose life-ling hero was Franklin Roosevelt, you'd probably answer, "Carter." It was, of course, Ronald Reagan. The U.S. policy (quietly) invoked to justify both Persian Gulf wars and our huge military presence there is the Carter Doctrine.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Why tax cuts won’t stim this time

At the moment, tax cuts make up 42 percent of the so-called stimulus bill. This dooms it to be ineffectual, if not actually making things worse. The latter will happen because this is all borrowed money. Public investments provide the means to repay it by improving commerce and productivity. Tax cuts just piss it away. Where are the fighting liberals who are going to filibuster this mess and make the president realize his bipartisanship dance has only reinvigorated the Republicans, the party that wrecked America?

In 2003, Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman laid out the exhaustive case against the cult of tax cuts, in a must-read, must-keep article in the New York Times Magazine. Yet this remains the only idea of the GOP, the party that wrecked America. And it has been given center stage by a naive president and weak Democrats who don't know how to act as winners. As a consequence, public investments in infrastructure, the best way to generate jobs and a return for the future, have been pared back. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good. But this is a rotten bill, and it is the enemy of the good, whether the punked good has realized yet or not.

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Posted inPolitics: National

A stimulus mistake?

Much of the details of the new stimulus have yet to be known. What's emerging so far is cause for concern. For one thing, the $300 billion in tax cuts may be smart politics, but it's questionable economics and policy. Then there's the issue of how federal dollars might be used to prime the pump, with so much going to backfill basic programs being defunded by cash-strapped states, and lobbyists of the powerful highway-sprawl consortium lining up for the "roads and bridges" money.

George W. Bush and eight years of Republican misrule — really more than a quarter century — are leaving the new administration with the worst mess in nearly 80 years. And remember, all this was validated over and over by a majority of Americans at the polls (maybe not in 2000 and 2004). It's an open question whether any president can lead the changes really necessary to address the Great Disruption, of which the economic collapse is only part. We'll see. But the barriers to real change we can believe in are mammoth.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Who to blame

So Alan Greenspan is shocked, shocked that gambling was going on in the casino that he and his fellow radicals made of the capital markets. In his testimony before Congress Thursday, he talked about how stunned he was that the markets weren’t self-regulating, that speculation and greed led to this disaster, which he likened to a “once in a century” financial tsunami.

But this is no act of God. The ongoing financial collapse is the direct result of the deregulation, trade, privatization and tax policies enacted by Alan Greenspan and the other rigid ideologues of the Republican Party over the past quarter of a century. The longtime Fed chairman is a disciple of the author Ayn Rand, whose advocacy of a brutal individualism has been turned into a devil-take-the-hindmost reality that would make Atlas blush.

It’s important for the American voter to understand this. The collapse of their savings, the deferment of their retirement dreams, the loss of their homes, the decline in their earnings, the elimination of their jobs – all has been the result of very conscious policies. They were promised an "ownership society," but, as Barack Obama said, the reality is that most Americans are on their own.

If Americans understand this, the election will not be in doubt. And, God willing, the calamity will discredit this extremist philosophy, just as happened in 1932, for decades to come. For this orthodox ideological extremism is every bit as bankrupt and failed as all its false prophet predecessors. Alan Greenspan and company, including former Sen. Phil Gramm, the great – and greatly compensated by the banking industry – deregulator and economic guru to wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III, are the most dangerous of men: true believers.

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Posted inPolitics: National

In search of McCain conservatism

President-elect McCain, his worshipful media coterie in tow, visited New Orleans and declared that the response to Hurricane Katrina had been "disgraceful and terrible," and, according to the doting New York Times, "pledged it would never happen again." The corporate media seemed especially relieved that the "senator from Arizona" had distanced himself from the toxic Texan currently residing in the McCain’s next mansion.

Yet the federal response to Katrina was the natural outgrowth of "conservatism" as it has come to be practiced by the mainstream of the party of Lincoln. The calamity was not an aberration. It was pretty much what would be expected from the combination of ideology, policy and practice from today’s "conservatives."

Maybe the "senator from Arizona" will redefine conservatism. The media desperately want him to be Barry Goldwater (I hear from excellent sources that the elderly Barry, a real senator from Arizona, was dismissive of the carpetbagger McCain). But even Goldwater never ran the government, never contended with the issues facing a 21st century, continental, diverse empire/nation. My experience is that McCain is not much of a hard-core ideologue, except for being a tightwad, a naysayer and, oddly for a combat veteran, trigger happy with the armed forces and eager for foreign adventures.

So what will McCain Conservatism be?

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

The recession this time

Another recession, and for many Americans the post-2001 recovery and expansion felt like one long tough slog. It would have felt worse had they been living within their means, but liar-loan mortgages, bottomless credit cards and cheap stuff from China allowed them to think they were rolling in the good times, just like the hedge-fund managers and CEOs.

Another recession, and it won’t be like 2001, when a fraud-driven bubble burst, or 1991, when the savings-and-loan scandal sank the economy. It will have fraud, bursting bubbles and unsustainable finance, to be sure. But it may be far worse than anything we have experienced since 1982, maybe longer.

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